


Ample Scope for Admiration and Delight

by Flobbergasted



Category: Anne with an E (TV)
Genre: Episode: s03e05 I Am Fearless and Therefore Powerful, F/M, Missing Scene, Shirbert
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-26
Updated: 2019-10-26
Packaged: 2021-01-03 12:50:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21179714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flobbergasted/pseuds/Flobbergasted
Summary: No matter how much they try to complain away the dancing, neither Gilbert nor Anne can shake it from their minds.Set during 3x05, “I Am Fearless and Therefore Powerful”





	1. The Good Doctor Can’t Sleep

He’d told Bash he felt “something” for “a girl.” Bash had given him brief but solid advice … but “something” had been an understatement. What did Gilbert feel for the girl in question? Lying awake in bed long past sundown that night, he found himself trying to sort it all out. He felt attraction, yes; that had been Bash’s word for it. He felt fondness, tenderness, awe, protectiveness, warmth … Did all of those feelings fall under “attraction”? He felt interest, admiration, respect, sometimes pure joy … He felt tightly coiled, in danger of springing loose at any moment. He felt alive. Yes, that was it: Anne made things come alive. She was dainty and pretty and strong, but the most attractive thing about her was the air that followed her wherever she went, intimating that something was about to happen.

But would _something_ ever happen? She was still young, and they both had their own important pursuits in life … While Gilbert acknowledged the urge to act on his attraction, he also knew he might not be ready—for what exactly, he could not specify—and Anne certainly didn’t seem ready either. So he’d wait. He’d wait and see. Perhaps the attraction would fade? Or perhaps, with time, she’d warm to him? He’d just have to bide his time and try to … take notice.

Gilbert had seen glimmerings in Anne’s behaviour, as they danced today, that gave him hope. He’d taken her hand, and she’d almost immediately dropped the wall she sometimes put between herself and everyone else—between herself and him, in particular—and had begun simply enjoying herself. Recalling her genuine smile and her wide, bright eyes—focused on _him_, always coming back to _him_—he couldn’t help but feel that pang of _something_ again.

Maybe it had started right away. Under cover of night, in the safety of his home, with Bash presently distracted by a teething baby, it seemed safe to admit it to himself: Anne had always sparked his interest. He had long since learned that, on that first day, he’d pushed her too far, but he’d fulfilled the mission that had consumed him so shortly after meeting her: to get her attention. All his life, Gilbert’s congeniality had taken him far; men and women and children alike were friendly with him, made comfortable by him, made easy in his presence. His father had had that Blythe knack as well. But it hadn’t worked its quick magic on Anne, and so she had become a curiosity for him, a puzzle, a tough nut to crack. And he had been cracking on with that project for years now, finding himself, on the whole, rather more intrigued than bothered.

His father—who’d also had that Blythe streak of mischief, let’s admit it—had taught him the basics of survival: how to care for the farm, how to cook an egg, how to catch and skin a rabbit, how to sew a button. But Gilbert and his father hadn’t had time to address many of the weightier subjects in which Gilbert now found himself needing instruction: how to know whether a girl was _the girl, _how (eventually) to be a husband, a father. How to be a man.

Anne hadn’t had much instruction either, he knew, but she seemed to be learning how to be a woman just fine. Was it Marilla’s nurture or Anne’s nature, or both? Anne could certainly cook, and she became more graceful and confident with every passing year, and she … She simply brought beauty to the everyday: a daintily wrapped packet of strawberry tarts, a flower-pressed cookbook, a sweet Easter hat. Gilbert could function, sure, but nowhere in his life were pretty, feminine things.

More recently, as he learned something about the world and something about himself, he also learned to walk the delicate line Anne had always drawn between them. He was learning just how far he could push her, pull her—just how far she’d allow. Today, as they danced, he’d boldly taken the lead, and he’d been surprised and pleased to find that she … Well, she let him. For a few short hours, it had been socially acceptable to be near her. To hear her intake of breath, and to feel her exhale. To grasp her hand. The moment the music ended, the new familiarity had been thwarted, and they’d both stopped short.

So they’d come closer than ever to that line, and it had shaken them both. At least, they’d both fairly flown out of the schoolhouse, and Gilbert hadn’t been able to forget that dance, no matter how much he tried to complain dancing out of his system that evening at home … 

_Only a boy can’t admit when he’s gone over a lady._

How far could he push her? How closely could he toe the line? Could he get near enough to know whether she felt _ something _ too? How much would Anne let him lead, and in which areas of life? It was very, _ very _tempting to open this new line of investigation. They’d both grown up a bit, since the slate incident … Maybe he could start to nudge her a little?

_No. Wait. Time will tell. Hold your horses._ He told himself these things, and he hoped they would stick for a while. _If you push her too far, you might push her away for good. _

Thus, at war with himself, he had chopped vegetables and boiled up the stew earlier in the evening.

Now, still at war with himself, he tossed and turned in the bedclothes, trying to put out of his mind the auburn hair he longed to touch again, failing to fall asleep.


	2. The Bride of Adventure Can’t Sleep

For at least a few days afterward, Anne had managed to tamp down the veritable geyser of feelings that had arisen last week when, to her great chagrin, Miss Stacy had thrust the dancing upon them all. But then Sunday had come around, and the girls had forced Anne to talk to Gil– _a certain boy_ about human reproduction, of all unmentionable things, and the _Gazette_ had been distributed, and Gilbert’s obituary for Mary sat humbly above the fold, asking to be read. And read it Anne did.

Then the floodgates truly opened.

Anne wanted to think it was all Ruby Gillis’s fault. If only Ruby hadn’t developed her paralyzing fear of dancing, she would have surely swooped in on Gilbert that afternoon, and he would have danced a perfectly genial, dull dance with her, and none of … the rest of it … would have happened. But Ruby hadn’t swooped in, and Anne had found herself partnered with Gilbert Blythe, and everything had gone awry.

The truth was … he had looked happy. Truly, radiantly happy for the first time in months. In the golden light of the fading afternoon, dancing to Moody’s reel in their one-room schoolhouse in little Avonlea, P.E. Island, Gilbert Blythe had seemed as jovial and contented as nature had meant him to be, before or without his recent woes. His worries and burdens had seemed to fall away; he had simply let go.

And it could not be denied, not even by Anne, that the look suited him. How tall he had grown, she realized now; and what fire there was in his bright, gold-flecked eyes; and what strength, coiled tight and ready to unfurl at will (she had felt some of that strength when his hands had grasped hers, again when he’d whirled her around); and what angular shoulders, as he bowed long in front of her. It was the bow that “did her in”: his straight-backed, deep bow, princely as anything from her beloved fairy stories. When his face rose to her after his dark curls, the fire was still in his eyes, and Anne realized—just as the dancing ended—that _something_ else had begun.

Ready for it she did not feel, and so she practically flew from the schoolhouse—but there it had been, nonetheless, for a flashing moment: the feeling of standing at the edge of a precipice and being only too happy to clasp hands—with Gilbert Blythe, of all _ridiculous_ people—and tumble off into oblivion.

Perhaps, she reflected (with none too much terror), he had “taken notice” that she, too, had let go. Set adrift of the social concerns that usually kept each of them at arms’ length (where had Ruby gone, anyway? And why did there have to be so much touching in dancing?) and forced into this partnership with Gilbert, Anne found herself softening under his warm attentions. Soon she was giving him freely of her smiles, her friendship (oh! How dearly she could now admit it: she had longed to give Gilbert her friendship since the first. Why had it all gone wrong?), and even—though she blushed in the darkness to think of it—her affection.

If she was being honest with herself—and if one can’t be honest with oneself after prayers on a Sunday evening, then when can one?—the affection had been there already. It had built up little by little over the few years they’d known one another, and she’d hardly taken notice of it. A smile came unbidden to Anne’s lips, and she snuffed it out in her bedding. Now that she was allowing herself to observe the fact, she could admit—to herself alone, under the cover of darkness—that the well of her affection for Gilbert ran deep. They had been good enemies, excellent rivals, and more recently, they had become good friends; perhaps they didn't eat lunch together at school or skip together through the Haunted Wood, but between themselves they had built a strong foundation of trust and reliance upon one another in difficult times.

There was also recent evidence of a truth Anne had long suspected in her heart of hearts: Gilbert had something of a poetical soul. It could not be denied any longer; he had written Mary a beautiful obituary—touching and true, deeply felt and composed well. And he had travelled some and become … not so much worldly as full of wonder for the wonderful world, a feeling to which Anne could relate intimately.

And—lest she forget—how utterly _dashing _he had been that day of the dance practise. The very picture of dashing.

But there. She would have to close the floodgates. Before morning, certainly. By morning, Anne needed to put away these useless, tender thoughts and go back to school, where she’d simply have to uphold the noblest ideal of comradeship. For what good would it do either her or Gilbert to indulge in this distraction when her great, perfect romance was out there somewhere, still waiting to happen to her? How could her dark, romantic hero compare to a pokey Avonlea schoolboy, even if that schoolboy was the handsomest and the smartest and the most gentlemanly, and perhaps simply the _goodest_? In any case, it wouldn’t do to dwell on that dance if she hoped to continue as the Bride of Adventure and as the hopeful scholar, seeking to make her way out of Avonlea and into the wide world, at least into a career before returning home. Anne had things to accomplish in this life, and she refused to be waylaid by the likes of Gilbert Blythe for even one more moment.

She simply must forget the feeling of his hand in hers. She simply must work harder to ignore the smiles he seemed to throw at her when she least expected them and yet needed them the most. She simply must go on as his friend.

And that thought brought her up sharply. She must not spoil their perfectly excellent friendship. She never would. That would be the absolute worst outcome.

And so, gazing out at the new blossoms of her beloved white cherry tree, which swayed gently in the soft, night breeze, Anne made up her mind to forget about everything.

It took nearly four mental recitations of _The Highwayman_ before she was able to fall asleep.


End file.
